A Measurement of Beauty Photoproduction Through Decays to Muons and Jets at HERA-II

TL;DR

This paper measures beauty quark production in ep collisions at HERA-II using muons and jets, providing data that align well with next-to-leading order QCD predictions.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed measurement of beauty photoproduction via muons and jets at HERA-II, with differential cross sections and comparison to QCD calculations.

Findings

Measured differential cross sections in various kinematic variables.

Results agree with NLO QCD predictions.

Provides new data for beauty quark production in ep collisions.

Abstract

The photoproduction of beauty quarks in ep collisions has been measured using a data sample of 170 pb^-1 collected with the H1 detector at HERA-II in the years 2006 and 2007. Events with two jets and a muon in the final state were investigated, and beauty events were identified using the muon's relative transverse momentum to a jet and its impact parameter. Visible cross sections were measured differentially in the transverse momenta of the highest energy jet (p_T^jet1) and the muon (pt_mu), the pseudorapidity of the muon (eta_mu) and of the photon's momentum fraction x_gamma entering the hard interaction. The measurements are found to be well described by QCD calculations at NLO.